Chapter 701 (Patreon)

The beastkin and Highmountain’s champions weren’t ready to give up that easily after all the damage they suffered. While their last minute reinforcements helped them salvage the battle from being a catastrophic defeat and they had managed to force the Republic to retreat they had still come out as the losing side considering the number of dead champions. 

The one issue they had was catching up with Aurexion, the dragon didn’t have the agility to simply dash away but his biggest advantage was his natural ability to fly,with his sense of balance regained now their pursuers would have to chase after him in the sky all the while knowing one wrong move would mean a tail swipe either outright killing them or sending them crashing to the ground. 

A barrage of spells came flying towards the Aurexion but because mages weren’t able to cast and chase they were left with using whatever they could quickly throw  out there in hopes of slowing Aurexion down. Those spells did little more than annoy Aurexion after Ajax weakened them with [Mana Syphon], he was using the spells to help himself regain enough Mana to heal his leg enough to stop the bleeding.

“What’s wrong?” Aurexion asked as he could feel Ajax struggling.

“The wound, it’s harder to close.”  Ajax grunted out as he focused on Life Mana, he used a little over two hundred Mana, that should have been more than enough to stop the bleeding but he only managed to stop his main artery. “Something about my fire form must have made it harder to close.” 

“Elemental form.” Aurexion corrected his bond. 

“What?” Ajax was confused. 

“You don’t even realize it do you?” Aurexion snorted as his tail batted an arrow away from the chasing champions. “The Mythic Skill you gained is called [Elemental Avatar], you have to have access to more than just a fire form.” 

Ajax was so shocked by Aurexion’s words that not only did he stop healing himself but even the pain throbbing in his leg was pushing to the back of his mind for a moment as he quickly double checked his status page. There it was, a Mythic Skill.

“How did you manage to gain it?” Aurexion’s question brought Ajax back to the present as the enemy champions gave up the chase once Aurexion flew high enough that maintaining such a height would be a burden even more champions that could usually handle themselves in the sky. 

“I don’t know.” Ajax muttered as he resumed his attempts at healing his leg and thought back to what he was doing when he gained the Skill. “I was trying to use Space Mana to teleport myself away from those vines.” 

“You were trying to unlock Space Mana by teleporting yourself?” Aurexion’s anger came back through the bond. “Are you trying to rip yourself apart? Everyone has Mana in their body that would naturally resist a partial teleport that would rip their body apart making the spell fail or stretch to accommodate the full body and resulting in a random end point but that doesn’t apply to you doing it to yourself since it's your own Mana.” 

“I figured that part out.” Ajax defended himself. “It's why I was flooding Mana through my body to reinforce and keep myself in one piece when your flames engulfed me.” 

That had been enough to mollify Aurexion for the moment though he was going to bring up the topic again at a later time looking back on it everything had turned out more than all right, gaining a Mythic Skill was a momentous occasion for any Ascendant let alone doing so before level one hundred. So instead he moved the conversation on to what Ajax’s new Skill did. 

“Do you have any idea about the limitations or any backlash from [Elemental Avatar]?” Aurexion changed the topic. 

“I’m pretty sure I turned into a flame ifrit back then, or at least something a lot like it.” Ajax said as he put more focus on his injury. “My fire magic responded to me in a way it never had before, my spells were as strong as chanted magic while keeping the speed and flexibility of my free casting. The downside, besides the obvious weakness to water and I am guessing anything else that can extinguish flames is that it didn’t just hurt my body. It feels like the damage went all the way to my soul, it’s probably why healing is so difficult there is no blueprint I have to slowly regrow it new.” 

“Similar to how you had to regrow your arm after the werewolf bite?” Aurexion asked.

“A little.” Ajax nodded. “But it isn’t as bad as that was, I can still rely on doing it myself and going off of my own memory and instinct since I am regrowing exactly what I lost and not fighting against the blueprint my soul thinks should be there. It’ll take a lot more time and Mana to heal but there should be no period of weakness where I have to relearn how to use the limb.” 

Evidently while Ajax may have gained an ifrit’s control over Fire Mana when he entered his elemental form he hadn’t gained its defensive properties, an ifirit’s soulshape was extremely durable and even detonated when separated while Ajax’s body had been as vulnerable as the regular manifestation of a regular fire elemental. 

“At least you don’t have a core.” Aurexion tried to point out one of the few upsides.

“I’m not going to try and test what happens if I lose my head while in elemental form.” Ajax words brought about a sombre silence as both of them briefly considered the implications. “I can’t use my Fire Mana.” 

Ajax’s realization drew Aurexion’s attention once more. They were close to regrouping with the rest of the army so they didn’t have much time to go over everything but this seemed like an important point. 

“I can’t even summon a small flame.” Ajax said as he frowned at his open palm trying his best to get even a small ember.

“Try focusing on your Skill, see if you can get an instinctual feeling of what is happening.” Aurexion advised him as he started his descent towards the allied army. 

“Oh, it’s one of the downsides of the Skill.” Ajax said after a moment as he focused on his newest Skill. “I thought it seemed a little too strong considering that there was barely a drain on my Mana or Stamina to stay in my elemental form, the longer I stay in one element the longer I can’t use that same element afterwards.” 

“I’m not so sure all elements will be as forgiving in terms of Mana and Stamina cost.” Aurexion said after a moment of silence. “Fire is relatively easy to generate but something like Metal, Earth or Magma might be a lot harder, or it might cost a lot of Stamina to move in. Can you swap elements at will?” 

“I don’t know…” Ajax took a moment to focus some more on the Skill to see if he could get any other idea. “Maybe… I don’t get the feeling that I can’t use a different element but I know I can’t use the Fire one before the restriction on my Fire as a whole runs out.” 

‘There it is’ Aurexion thought as a shudder went through his entire body from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail. ‘The power of a Mythic Skill’ as far as Aurexion could tell the only weakness of Ajax’s elemental form was something that could hurt an elemental, but if he could swap from one to other at will from one moment to the next he could in theory go from Fire to Ice in a moment turning what should have been a deadly ice spell into something he could probably turn against his opponent. The only downside was that he couldn’t go back to a previous element in the same fight, at least not yet. The Skill was still only level one and with thresholds every ten levels there was no telling how Ajax could get the Skill to grow. 

“Say nothing of Mythic Skill to anyone.” Aurexion advised before they got into earshot of the people gathered below to receive them. “Imply it was a Legendary Skill, we’ll have to figure out more about it later but until then we keep everything under wraps.” 

“What are you worried about?” Ajax could feel Aurexion was worried about something specific. 

“This hammer, it’s a very powerful dungeon weapon.” Aurexion answered. “It could be that they just got lucky on a delve and managed to get it out but it could also be that they had help from an Ascended race to do so. If word gets out about you having a Mythic Skill things could take a turn for the worst.” 

“How is that?” Ajax asked. 

“Because of how strong the last humanoid who had a Mythic Skill was.” Aurexion was said as he thought about the stories of the Reaper he had been told. To think that he was bonded with the human who seemed to be his successor, he would have to thank his aunt for suggesting he bond with Ajax. “What happened, did you try to gain a seduction Skill?” The prince’s joking words didn’t match his tone as he rushed towards Ajax’s naked form and focused on the still bleeding stump where his leg ended. His attention quickly switched over to the hammer in Ajax’s other claw once he saw how slow the wound was bleeding and that Ajax’s magic was slowly closing it. “Did you manage to kill him?” 

“Debrief later, healing now.” More than a few of the people swarming around them wanted to argue that point but none of them made even a peep once they looked in the direction of the dragon.